The Hollow Men
by Divide et Imper
Summary: War makes men hollow, carves out their souls and pours bitterness and sorrow back in. This is the tale of the Winchesters in the War to Come, and those that fought with them against the Demon. Based on a Poem by T.S. Elliot, rated for gorey imagery.
1. Prologue: Jo

_Mistah Kurts – he is dead  
A penny for the Old Guy_

Jo can't remember the exact moment when the war started.

Maybe it was that night in '83 when Mary Winchester was burned alive on the ceiling of her son's nursery. Or perhaps a few months later when John Winchester left the house of one Missouri Mosely.

Some days she fancies that it was when the two Winchester boys first walked into her mother's roadhouse and set out on their mission to find all the "special children". A mission which grew into a quest, and finally an obsession. A spark that spawned a flame that lit Jo's world on fire, and left her to smoulder as it raged on. Once the fire burned you, and the flame licked your soul, the urge to hunt – to kill became a need.

Regardless of when, and who, the war came to be. As wars tend to do, it swept its way from town to town, state to state, country to country, until the whole world was aflame with supernatural activity in levels never recorded. The other world that Jo and her family were a part of slowly began to bleed into the natural world – the real world. No longer did parents comfort their children with assurances that there was no such thing as a boogeyman – instead, children slept in one room, guns were propped by the doors, curtains drawn and lights put out.

Where before people had brushed aside whispers of vampires, werewolves and devils, suddenly garlic was in high demand, silver jewelry mysteriously went missing, and church attendance skyrocketed. It was as if the world had previously had its fingers in its ears, humming away any mention of disorder and chaos, and suddenly, was forced to pay attention. Books were taken out of libraries, researched, reprinted and distributed from house to house. Headlines no longer read of global warming and political debate, but of mysterious disappearances and gruesome deaths. Salt and brick dust wassuddenly the hot commodity – stores everywhere were scrambling to provide for something no one quite believed was real, but feared all the same.

And then the hunt began.


	2. Dean

_We are the hollow men  
We are the stuffed men  
Leaning together  
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!  
Our dried voices, when  
We whisper together  
Are quiet and meaningless  
As wind in dry grass  
Or rats' feet over broken glass  
In our dry cellar_

Sam and Dean lean together, one brother's shoulder becoming the other's pillow as they wait for the sun to rise. To rise on another day where friends will be lost, enemies killed, and where more blood will flow down the streets in twin rivers of black and red. Sam looks sightlessly out to the other hunters in the Roadhouse, frowning as though he could still see the men and women sprawled around the bar, various weapons ready to kill anything that so much breathes in a suspicious manner. Dean wonders if perhaps he can see, if not with his ruined eyes then with his abilities, the same ones that put them on this path in the first place. He rests his head on top of his brothers, and tightens his hand around the shotgun as he glances past Jo – still holding on to her mother's hand, though Ellen's been dead three hours past – looking at the faint hint of light between the boards in front of the windows.

He watches the specks of dust as they drift across the anemic beams of light, and realises that it's the first time in a week he hasn't been thinking about how to load a gun, gut a man, or break someone's neck in the most efficient way. War has been a part of life so long, the smell of blood in the air, the moans of the injured, and always, always that hint of sulphur hanging around the dead, there's no room in his head for anyone else. More will have to be salted and burned; more will be added to the chorus of the dead, those whose souls hinge on the outcome of the war. Thoughts fly through Dean's head, impossible thoughts - frightening thoughts. Some days Sam asks "are you ok?" and Dean wants to scream, wants to shout, to whimper and cry, because he's fought for so long and so hard, and there are the dead with their names and voices and faces and blood and –

The weak light has turned into rays of golden brilliance, signaling the end of another night.

One more night spent alive.

Another day to die.


	3. Sarah

_Shape without form, shade without colour,  
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;_

_Those who have crossed  
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom  
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost  
Violent souls, but only  
As the hollow men  
The stuffed men._

Sarah wonders if they knew they would die.

Cold fingers drift reverently over engraved names, dance over pictures, and touch withered flowers. Yellow eyes drift over photos of loved ones, with heartfelt messages '_our mommy, only resting'_ and narrow in scorn. Thousands and thousands of names stretch metre after metre, an endless litany of the dead. Somehow, with all the dead and dying, there are still those who find the time and the decency to list the names of the dead, to give one last respect to those who have been lost. Every day the list is checked, and updated by unseen men and women, pictures put up near the names. Crowds and crowds of people flock to the walls each day hoping never to see a name, never to put up a picture. Suddenly, the fingers come to rest on a name, and a cold chuckle is heard which sends near by mourners looking for their guns, or their silver knives. It doesn't matter, and she doesn't care. Suddenly her vision is obscured, and she feels coldness where she should feel warmth, feels nothing where hands, feet, and face should be.

First one tear, then another, until a river of sorrow runs from doe brown eyes. She has been given a moment, a precious moment to be herself and fully experience the horror. For all the wishing and hoping, hoping that she would have a chance, this chance, and it slips away from her like the tears slipping down her cheeks. That name was everything she wished for, everything she waited for, and now she knows that is futile, that there is no hope. Anger blooms from sorrow, rage from despair, and Sarah rages, screams, howls, throws herself again and again against the unyielding darkness. A macabre smile stretches across her face and she feels the nothingness settle in as it takes control again.

Sarah cries and weeps and curses as the demon laughs in triumph at a name.

**Sam Winchester**


	4. Ava

_Eyes I dare not meet in dreams  
In death's dream kingdom  
These do not appear:  
There, the eyes are  
Sunlight on a broken column  
There, is a tree swinging  
And voices are  
In the wind's singing  
More distant and more solemn  
Than a fading star._

_Let me be no nearer  
In death's dream kingdom  
Let me also wear  
Such deliberate disguises  
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves  
In a field  
Behaving as the wind behaves  
No nearer --_

_Not that final meeting  
In the twilight kingdom_

That which had once called itself Ava smiled a wicked smile as she sat in the candlelight. She had once been human, once been weak and small and afraid – but no longer. The man with the yellow eyes spoke to her in dreams and sang sweet songs of promise. First, she found the man named Gordon – a simple man, he fell into her plans like a baby bird from the nest, uniting the Winchesters once more to face the coming darkness. Regrettably, Tod had to be killed, but the rhythmic slashing of the night and the sweet sound of gurgling blood was comforting – comforting like the mother who burned to death a few weeks before she met _him_. Stuck to the ceiling. The old Ava, when Ava had been a girl and not a god, had cried for her mother. This new thing, this creature born of pain and suffering, and nightmares dark and terrible – this thing could pretend to be Ava. Had been Ava when the young Winchester was about to die, was Ava long enough to save him and then to die again.

Ironically enough, it had been another dream that brought them together. He'd drempt that she was alive, that she was screaming his name and crying. And so he came – a white night on a shining steed to save her. She took his eyes as payment for his folly, has them in a jar to stare into when she needs to have a chuckle. He only saw when she was bling that she was a thing of darkness now, that the costume of Ava could be pulled away to reveal this… this _thing _that came of suffering. That came from dreams of yellow eyes and sweet release into nothingness. Whatever shred of Ava was left in the creature, it left now. It left when the last gasp of breath left Sam Winchester, when Dean came in crying and screaming and cursing her damned soul.

She sits and smiles, and waits.

Maybe if he's good, she'll give the thing that had called itself Sam his eyes.


	5. Gordon

_III_

_This is the dead land  
This is cactus land  
Here the stone images  
Are raised, here they receive  
The supplication of a dead man's hand  
Under the twinkle of a fading star._

_Is it like this  
In death's other kingdom  
Waking alone  
At the hour when we are  
Trembling with tenderness  
Lips that would kiss  
Form prayers to broken stone._

Gordon hasn't believed in a God since he had to kill his sister all those years ago.

His mother slapped him, screamed at him, and disowned him. He understood, and he hoped that if she was still alive, maybe she could understand a little now. Love him a little now. Now that those things are crawling all over the country, killing, maiming - destroying the world on a whim, he hopes that someone out there understands. Understands at least a little. He hopes Dean can see now, that people like them had to stick together, had to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. He hopes, but he doubts it.

Silence. He thinks the guards might have been killed first, but he's not sure. The other prisoners made sounds – screaming, banging. Some of them fought, most of them died, others joined the ranks of filth and took up arms against their fellow men.

Soon, he knows he will die. He sees her coming, the girl with a wholesome face and furious yellow eyes. A shorter girl with a blank, lost look follows her, and a man trails behind, hidden in shadow. The girl with yellow eyes reaches through the bars and pulls him to her, almost like a lover. Gordon knows he should move - should do something, anything. Nevertheless, he does nothing as she kisses him, as if sealing some bizarre pact, or accepting payment. He is too busy looking at the man in the shadows, seeing the broad set of the shoulders, and realizing that he had the truth.

When she lets him go, he laughs humourlessly, praying for death as he looks into Sam Winchester's yellow eyes.


	6. Nicole

_IV_

_The eyes are not here  
There are no eyes here  
In this valley of dying stars  
In this hollow valley  
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms_

_In this last of meeting places  
We grope together  
And avoid speech  
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river_

_Sightless, unless  
The eyes reappear  
As the perpetual star  
Multifoliate rose  
Of death's twilight kingdom  
The hope only  
Of empty men._

He plans and he plans, and they lose and they lose.

She watches him strategize like a four star general, but she can't move past what he was, and what he could have been. It's so unfair, that he left, that she pushed him away. Oh she has his body - on the odd night that they're not fighting for their lives - she has his body, she has his warmth and his presence, something to hold onto in the dark. But that is all she has. His heart left when he found his brother dead in the arms of someone thought long dead. His soul left when he saw his brother holding the severed head of an old hunter, black skin gone pale with lack of blood. And all that's left is mind and body and vengeance.

Many of those who have gathered have nothing left. They've all become soldiers, fighters through default, fodder for the armies of darkness to plow through. She used to be like them, focused on the fight, the mission, the hunt. She used to sit and talk with him, to plan with him, kill with him. Suddenly there's more to life again, there's a reason for staying alive each day other than trying to win the good fight. A reason with ten fingers and ten toes. Before the war she would have cried, and screamed, and gone to a clinic and ignored it for the rest of her days. A reason with ten fingers and ten toes. Maybe it's a futile hope, to think that something so small and so innocent could survive in what the world's become. A hope born of a place that reeks of death and despair.

She doesn't want to tell him, can't bear to think it herself. It's unfair and cruel and beautiful and serene, it's hope and failure. And it's theirs. She runs her hand over her belly and stares into the sunset and over at him, and dares to think that maybe, just maybe this time they'll win.

They have to, for the future of their child.


	7. Sammy

_V _

_Here we go round the prickly pear  
Prickly pear prickly pear  
Here we go round the prickly pear  
At five o'clock in the morning._

Her father took her to the park when she was younger.

Not to play. No one went outside with children unless they were armed to the nines, and even then it was suicide. The small pockets of humanity that were left rarely went outside unless they were moving from one secure location to the next. But her father was nothing if not ballsy, and every week he'd take her to the park.

The park was a jungle gym, and few trees next to a long wall. The father had told the child that the wall had once held the names of the fallen, in the early years of the war. Now names were kept in the hearts of family members, since they had long ago run out of wall to write names on. He took her to one wall in particular, and rubbed the ash and dust from the letters so her sister and she could see it. He never spoke, but the other girl did, tugging on her sister's sleeve. Mary Winchester and her sister were twins, but where Mary was light and full of hope, her sister was dark, and serious.

"Look Sammy, that's your name. Sam Winchester, isn't that cool?"


	8. Mary

_Between the idea  
And the reality  
Between the motion  
And the act  
Falls the Shadow _

_For Thine is the Kingdom_

_Between the conception  
And the creation  
Between the emotion  
And the response  
Falls the Shadow_

_Life is very long_

_Between the desire  
And the spasm  
Between the potency  
And the existence  
Between the essence  
And the descent  
Falls the Shadow  
For Thine is the Kingdom_

Mary Winchester is nothing like her sister, or her father.

She's full of life, vibrant and glorious. Where her sister has learned to hunt, learned to kill, learned to be what their father loves most, Mary has become their mother. Before their mother died, she had taken the girls to church every day. There, in the quiet, she sang old songs with them, and pulled out a charred version of the bible to teach them to read. Mary continued to read that book, even though her sister abandoned it for strategy guides and borrowed versions of Tom Clancy.

Words have power.

Her sister fights with knives and guns, is much better at strategizing than Mary, but Mary has the power. She learned from Missouri, when the woman could still tell reality from vision. She learned from the small group of Wiccans that still survived, and from the clergymen who worked side by side with them. She learned the power of words. When their father died, the Demon came for them, but Mary remembered times with her mother, and spoke the Word.

The Word is power.

Now, it is them. Alone. Sam and Mary against the Demon horde, and Mary doesn't know if the Word is enough, if they can do this without their father. He took 30 of the enemy down before the end, and he lived long enough to say goodbye to his children. They got back the gun that killed him, the Dead Man's Gun, and made one bullet – one final bullet, using all of Mary's power, and all of Sam's skill. Aunt Jo is waiting at the Roadhouse – waiting for failure or victory, no one is sure. It's been so long since the war began that no one knows what to do if it ends, either way.

The Winchesters will face that end together.


	9. Sam

_For Thine is  
Life is  
For Thine is the_

Sam Winchester is trapped.

Trapped in his own body long after his death. He looks through eyes that are his, and yet are not. Stolen, only to be returned to a doomed creature. He watched as countless humans were slaughtered, his old nemesis Gordon ruthlessly murded by Sarah – Sarah who had been taken by the Demon in the early days of the war and mercifully released by Dean. He watched as Dean faced a mass of soldiers, and fought his way to victory. He watched his own hand point the dead man's gun at his brother, watched his brother activate his amulet just as the gun went off. He watched his brother use the last of the magic in the amulet to have a minute to say goodbye to two girls. He watched the two girls cry as he died in their arms.

Two girls who now watch him.

He mocks the Demon in his head, as he sees them standing there. They are strong – one so much like Dean that looking at her _hurts_ – the other, the other looks like a half forgotten memory, of a woman who smiled and laugh, a woman who looked like Jess in his dreams before she burned.

Burned like the fires that burned the world.

But there are no more fires. Humanity has accomplished more than they thought, and now the only major player on the field is the demon in his body. And he laughs, he laughs at the Demon, and all the plans to take over the world, because he knows. He knows that they are Winchesters, and that they will fight the good fight, will continue the family business. His eyes fade from yellow to a beautiful hazel once more, as he uses all the willpower he's stored over the years to have one moment, one single moment of freedom. The girl who's like Dean raises the gun and points it at him, squinting in confusion as if she can almost tell who he is. He sister realizes it a second sooner and begins to cry as she helps her sister hold the gun straight.

"Now."


	10. Epilogue

_This is the way the world ends  
This is the way the world ends_

The body of the Samuel Winchester hits the ground with a faint crackle, and the Demon is expelled from the body and sent back to hell. The bullet took around 8 secconds to reach his brain – his body 30 secconds to reach the floor. The two girls stand in the park beside the names of the fallen, staring at the last of their family, which was killed in less than a minute. And the world keeps turning, no one knowing for hours, neither human nor demon reacting, as the first rays of light, weak and pale, come over the horizon. Hours go by, and a burning salted corpse is watched over by two sisters, two Winchesters.

The weak light has turned into rays of golden brilliance, signaling the end of another night.

One more night spent alive.

Another day to die.

_This is the way the world ends  
Not with a bang but a whimper._


End file.
